Throughout the entire history of Earth...

Anti-Tea Party Member

Can anyone name for me ONE TIME where the conquerors decided to stop speaking their language and started speaking the conquerees language?

For instance, there's a joke about the French complaining about speaking English in a military conference of NATO. And the Frenchman is bitching and moaning about why they must always speak English. Well, an American General steps in and states that perhaps it is because the Americans saw to it that the French didn't wind up having to speak German.

Can anyone explain to me why we don't speak Native American language and why we don't eat their food and practice their customs on a daily basis?

Mods, please don't delete this. I'm getting to a point where I'll be discussing all of the Abrahamic religions.

We don't speak their languages for the reason you implied, because we won. (Those of us who aren't Native Americans, that is.) Also because English was suitable for a universal American tongue, while no single Native American language was; different tribes spoke different languages.

However, we DO eat their food, and we practice some of their customs, too. Or have you never eaten a tortilla, or a squash, or chili peppers, or potatoes, or tomatoes? And that is a common occurrence, unlike the conqueror adopting the language of the conquered. Visit London and you will find many Indian restaurants.

We don't speak their languages for the reason you implied, because we won. (Those of us who aren't Native Americans, that is.) Also because English was suitable for a universal American tongue, while no single Native American language was; different tribes spoke different languages.

However, we DO eat their food, and we practice some of their customs, too. Or have you never eaten a tortilla, or a squash, or chili peppers, or potatoes, or tomatoes? And that is a common occurrence, unlike the conqueror adopting the language of the conquered. Visit London and you will find many Indian restaurants.

So can you tell me why the Israelites, who are descendants of Abraham and who conquered Canaan, speak the language of the people they conquered?

Supposedly Abraham was born in Mesopotamia. More specifically, Ur, which was part of Sumeria at the time. Sumerians spoke.... Sumerian, which was a type of Cuneiform. So this is the language that Abraham spoke when supposedly "God" spoke to him and he went off and went to live in Canaan. For a while we had Abraham who with Sarah had Isaac who had Jacob who had Joseph. So let's just say they were in Canaan for 200 years or so. Then they decided to move to Egypt.

Well, according to the Old Testament, they were taken into slaves a while later and remained slaves in Egypt for hundreds of years. So while they were slaves, why didn't they start speaking the language that Egpyptians spoke? You really think the Egyptians would've tolerated the people speaking Sumerian?

Ok, so let's just, for some odd reason, suspend disbelief and think that the Egyptians allowed the Sumerians/Jews to speak Sumerian for hundreds of years. So then all of a sudden the Jews, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, are freed from Egypt and make their way to Canaan where they have this biq, massive war with the Canaanites. Even by our standards today, 600,000 people is a large number. If 600,000 Chinese landed in California to attack the US, it would cause some major problems. Moving on, the Bible tells us that 600,000 Hebrews/Jews/Sumerians conquered Canaan. OK. Great.

In between the time of freedom from slavery and the time the Jews entered Canaan, God gave them the Torah, correct? Why is the Torah in the same language as what the Canaanites spoke?

The language was called back then.... Phoenician. This was the language spoken by Canaanites. It is identical to the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet. Around 500 years or so BC, around the time the Babylonians conquered Israel, they began to speak Aramaic. Post-Aramaic, Hebrew began to evolve into the more squareish Aleph-Bet its known as today.

Anyway, so as was stated above, the Torah was given to the Sumerians slaves in Egypt that for some reason were allowed to keep their language, in the language of the people they're about to conquer.